Greensboro review : Daughtry holds his own with Bon Jovi

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Review: Daughtry holds his own with Bon Jovi
By Parke Puterbaugh
Special to the News & Record
Tuesday, Mar. 18, 2008 3:00 am
Chris Daughtry opens for Bon Jovi Lost Highway World Tour concert at the Greensboro Coliseum on Sunday.
Credit: Lynn Hey/News & Record

Chris Daughtry opens for Bon Jovi Lost Highway World Tour concert at the Greensboro Coliseum on Sunday.

GREENSBORO — On Sunday night at the Greensboro Coliseum, Chris Daughtry — the Triad's own homegrown rock star — performed a confident, feisty set as the opening act for veteran Jersey rockers Bon Jovi.

But he wasn't done yet.

As if kicking it hard at a sold-out show of 22,115 — the fourth largest concert attendance in coliseum history — with his own band wasn't enough of a buzz, Daughtry later got called onstage to trade vocals with Jon Bon Jovi on "Blaze of Glory."

Daughtry more than held his own, and the screams and applause for their raw-throated collaboration were the loudest of the evening.

He exited amid a flurry of hugs and backslaps, and then Jon Bon Jovi continued to sing his praises.

All I can say is that Daughtry must go to bed at night wondering, "What else can go right?"

Daughtry and band played a punchy 45-minute set. Admittedly, they didn't fill the space on a big-venue stage with quite the time-tested ease of Bon Jovi, but they're definitely ramping up the "Guitar Hero" body English to project to the nosebleed seats.

And Daughtry's big, brawny voice projected all the way out of the arena and into the next county.

Unfortunately, he is already beginning to turn his radio favorites into concert singalongs, facing the mic toward the crowd and coaxing them to join in, which smacks of showbiz hokum.

To his credit, however, he exited in a hail of feedback with a ferocious new song. The contrarian in me enjoyed hearing several nearby audience members whine among themselves that it was "too loud."

Bon Jovi came on at 9 p.m. and played for two and a half hours without a break. They were the epitome of the well-traveled veteran rock band that time has molded into a thoroughly entertaining entity.

Frontman and heartthrob Jon Bon Jovi was personable and professional, moving with a dancer's grace and a rocker's cool.

His onstage foil was guitarist Richie Sambora, who projected no small amount of nonmenacing rock-star charisma himself.

The two other official members were ring-curled keyboardist David Bryan and beefy drummer Tico Torres.

Three other musicians rounded out the lineup.

Bon Jovi culled familiar hits and solid album tracks from often-spotty albums, and their distilled career highlights came across as compellingly hooky and well-crafted mainstream rock. Smartly, they leaned hard on the rockers in their catalog, keeping the ballads at bay, for the most part.

Accompanied by arrestingly contemporary lighting and staging, Bon Jovi made a case for themselves as enduring classic rockers. Their 80s-vintage hard-rocking numbers, always rising to big, poppy choruses, proved to be hugely entertaining.

You could also detect leanings toward the rootsier strains and more socially conscious lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp in some of Bon Jovi's recent material — especially songs drawn from their latest album, "Lost Highway," which nods towards country and Americana.

The group even had an onstage violinist, a la Mellencamp and Springsteen.

Wisely, Bon Jovi didn't let these trappings and tangents get in the way of the party — a party that, even after two and a half hours, seemed to end too quickly.

And the encores — the Dave Clark Five's "Glad All Over" and Roy Head's "Treat Her Right" — paid energetic homage to rock and roll's roots.

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